In advanced civilizations the period loosely called Alexandrian is usually associated with flexible morals, perfunctory religion, populist standards and cosmopolitan tastes, feminism, exotic cults, and the rapid turnover of high and low fads—in short, a falling away (which is all that decadence means) from the strictness of traditional rules, embodied in character and inforced from within. — Jacques Barzun

Archive for May, 2008

The Obamas have resigned from Trinity United Church. There’s a list of reactions here. Peter Wehner:

Barack Obama’s resignation from Trinity United Church of Christ over, in part, “a cultural and a stylistic gap” raises additional doubts about him. The obvious question is what “cultural and stylistic gap” exists now that hasn’t existed during the last two decades, when Obama was a member of Trinity United and an intimate friend with its pastor, Jeremiah Wright Jr.? The answer, of course, is none. Trinity United and Jeremiah Wright are what they have always been; it is Obama — or more precisely, Obama’s political interests — that have changed.

It’s been just over two months since Obama’s Philadelphia speech on race — the one that was compared by the historian Garry Wills to Lincoln’s Cooper Union address. In that speech Obama famously said he could not more disown the Reverend Jeremiah Wright than he could disown the black community or his own grandmother and spoke about how Trinity United “embodies the black community in its entirely.”

Since that speech Wright has been tossed under the bus — and now, so has Trinity United….

What Obama did today may have been politically necessary. It was certainly politically expedient. And it is yet one more blow to Obama’s image as a different kind of politician. In fact, as we’ve learned over the last few months, Obama appears to be a Chicago politician through and through. When he perceived a threat to his self-interest, he cut his ties to first his pastor and then his church, both of which he had expressed familial love and fidelity. This whole episode is deeply unattractive, even as it is deeply revealing.

Back in February, I wrote about Jackie, who was born in our house in 1995 after a graduate student found a pregnant stray cat at her apartment complex. This is her sister Jewel. Always a bit of a recluse, Jewel suffered some sort of trauma while we were on vacation a few years ago and our housesitter abandoned his duties and left town. We returned to find her hissing and spitting at anything that moved. We have no idea what happened. Extraordinarily suspicious of almost all other cats, she now stays in her own room, the library, where she has an occasional feline visitor but otherwise has the place to herself. She’s friendly to people she knows. But being in her own room means she gets less attention than she’d like.

Megan McArdle comments on that Wall Street Journal title and the accompanying article. It’s a phrase that McCain ought to be preparing for use in a debate. It’s probably better than the one I thought of: “Change—Out of YOUR Pocket!”

Stanley Kurtz and Charles Johnson find some connections and explore their significance. Not to put too fine a pun on it, ACORN really is nutty, and Obama’s intimate connection with it deserves much more scrutiny than it’s been getting. Johnson also finds a Soros-McClellan connection. I think we’re starting to learn whose puppet Obama is.

Five hundred fifty five years ago today, Constantinople fell to the invading Muslim armies, which would eventually overrun most of Eastern Europe and, in 1529, 1566, and 1683, threaten Vienna and the rest of Europe. My own ancestors (on my father’s side) were already under Muslim domination, where they would remain for almost five hundred years. Black Tuesday, “the last day of the world,” was also the final day of the Roman Empire, which survived in the East for almost a millennium past its collapse in the West.

Greg Mankiw defends free trade against Robert Driskill’s attack. I’d add one more argument. Driskill claims that the benefits of free trade go to the few, the costs go to the many, and there’s no redistribution of the benefits to compensate them. Not only is there redistribution by way of the progressive tax system, as Mankiw notes, but the benefits of free trade extend much more widely than Driskill allows. Consider trade with Japan on electronics or automobiles. There’s no question that it cost many American jobs. But the benefits have extended to everyone who buys electronics or automobiles in the form of higher quality goods for lower prices.